Boston Ballet embarks on ChoreograpHER project

By Iris Fanger/For The Patriot Ledger

Thursday

Nov 8, 2018 at 1:16 PMNov 9, 2018 at 8:57 AM

The ballerina turning on pointe at center stage has been the universal symbol of ballet throughout its history, but it has been the men backstage who decided when, where and what she danced. That’s about to change.

The Boston Ballet has started a three-year initiative to open new opportunities for female choreographers called ChoreograpHER, which includes a series of workshops for female ballet students in the Boston Ballet school to create, rehearse, and present a piece of choreography with their peers. The first workshop will take place in 2019. In addition, annually through 2020, the company will present BB@home: ChoreograpHER, a program featuring works by female choreographers. Finally, the 2020-2021 season, will offer a program dedicated to women artists - choreographers, composers, and designers - as part of the Opera House schedule.

The project began last weekend with a sold-out, two night run of BB@home: ChoreograpHER. Original works created by six company dancers were set on their colleagues and performed in the fourth floor studio-turned-theater at the company’s home at 19 Clarendon Street. The large fourth floor rehearsal hall was transformed by black curtains covering the classroom mirrors, with stage lights overhead. The audience was seated on banks of risers in front. The brief works were presented by principal dancer Lia Cirio; second soloist, Hannah Bettes; and corps de ballet members Jessica Burrows, Lauren Flower, Sage Humphries and Haley Schwan. Each of the ballets was ravishingly performed by their friends in the company, as if they were physically cheering on the new talents. Casting some corps dancers in prominent parts gave Boston Ballet fans in the audience a chance to know the performers better and a closer look at those often hidden further back on stage.

In addition to the performances of the ballets, the British visual artist, Shantell Martin, based in New York, delivered a talk about the creative process. She grabbed a marker to draw a picture on a blank canvas. The challenge she posed to the viewers was to “imagine what it’s like to be a female artist.”

In general, the works by the choreographers were more evocative of contemporary dance than classical ballet, with movement drawn from a variety of styles, especially modern dance. In most of the pieces, the female performers left off their pointe shoes in favor of bare feet or socks. Other than the lead-off ballet, “In Search of Lost Time,” choreographed by Bettes, the works did not tell stories or establish characters for the dancers. “In Search of Lost Time” (music ”Varoelus” by Sigor Ros) used Q’s spoken poem about “a woman evolving,” to portray the many roles of women in modern times. Dalay Parrondo was dressed in a red pants suit, looking for all the world like Hillary Clinton, in contrast to two other women who led other kinds of lives. Flower’s “Momentous,”(music by the Kronos Quartet with Laurie Anderson), began with one woman in athletic poses that reminded me of Merce Cunningham’s works. Later, she was joined by a second woman and two men in fast-paced phrases that included lots of windmill turning arms and slides along the floor, enhanced by innovative lifts.

Maria Baranova and So Jung Lee, dressed in tutus and wearing pointe shoes, were partnered by Paul Craig and Daniel Cooper for Burrows’ “Variation” (“Concerto No. 6”by Vivaldi), the most classical piece, despite one startling moment when the women, in full splits, were turned upside down on their partners’ shoulders. Cirio’s “Sta(i)r(e)s,” (music by the Carolina Chocolate Drops) for a cast of four included a percussion section that suggested a Middle Eastern setting. Cirio gave the three men their own segment. Maria Alvarez was the only woman in the cast.

The program ended with “Just” by Schwan to music by Nico Muhly for five dancers and “You,” choreographed by Sage Humphries, set to a piano score performed by her brother, Michael Humphries, which added interludes of clapping by its five dancers. Each of the six new pieces fielded admirable ideas of staging and innovative partnering, promising a bright future for the ChoreograpHER project.

The ChoreograpHER initiative comes on the heels of the American Ballet Theatre’s recent season that presented five women choreographers at Lincoln Center in New York, and the New York City Ballet giving its women performers a platform to speak out against sexual abuse. The Boston Ballet’s program is a three-year initiative to open new opportunities.

The program is “uniquely designed to create space for the next generation of female choreographers to explore, create, grow, and share their talents with the world,” said Boston Ballet Artistic Director Mikko Nissinen.